Tag: Keith Hufnagel

The internet has given plenty of pros, videos and companies — or at least an idealized version of them — a second life. Case in point: Metropolitan was a Deluxe-distributed wheel brand that ended in the mid-nineties. It began its second internet life on the pages of Police Informer, a defunct Blogspot page of largely east coast-centric magazine scans before Chromeball took the torch over in 2010. The company’s ads were black and white portraits of skateboarding in New York shot by Ari Marcopoulos, with a distinct non-skate photographer take on the traditional skate ad.

Since then, those iconic ads have been reblogged, regrammed and reposted in every place possible, oftentimes by people too young to have ever ridden a set of Metropolitan wheels. After seeing a few glimpses of Metropolitan gear that was a bit too clean to be vintage throughout the past year, we learned that Keith Hufnagel, one of the original teamriders for the brand, is relaunching it altogether.

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For those don’t know, what was Metropolitan?

Metropolitan was a wheel company. Deluxe was doing Spitfire in the early nineties, and they decided they wanted to have a brand that was more east coast driven. They realized they weren’t getting much traction on the east coast. It was Jim Thiebaud, Chris Pastras, and a few others who developed Metropolitan, which only featured east coast skaters. It was myself, Ryan Hickey, Maurice Key, and a bunch of other guys.

It was a cool but very short-lived company. Spitfire was doing well, Metropolitan was doing decent, and they had to make the decision on which to run with. Spitfire was the stronger brand, so they continued to go with it. We were all heartbroken because we all thought Metropolitan was the best brand ever. It was around for three or four years, but I’m not positive.

Was there any reason as to why Deluxe wanted to start a wheel company as opposed to a board brand?

I’m not sure. Deluxe has done a lot of off-shoots that were board companies. They did Stereo, they did Rasa Libre. Some stayed, some went away. I’m not sure why they didn’t approach Metropolitan as a board company, but maybe their plate was too full.

They painted the curbs here yellow, and now it’s the second or third best spot in the city that you don’t get kicked out of. Paint more stuff yellow.

Can’t remember the last time a montage got me as psyched as “Faces,” the new one from Ben Chadourne, featuring the Blobys, Bobby Worrest, Hjalte, etc. These videos have a remarkable way of making Paris look like the funnest place in the world (which it probably is), even in the winter. The Rod Stewart is also perfect.

“As tennis’ stars age, will aping skateboarding provide an elixir of youthful advertising audiences or will tennis’ wealthy overlords catch onto the notion that a sizable bulk of pro shoes and contract dollars are tied up in veteran pros whose salad grinding days of filming feature length video parts may lie years in the past?” — Boil the Ocean re: skateboarding’s current infatuation with tennis. Frozen in Carbonite also tackled this subject four years ago following Gino’s Mcenroe commercial et al.

Given that 2016 marks the twenty-year anniversary of everything from Welcome to Hell, to E.E. 3 to Mouse, SMLTalk has a retrospective of all the seminal 1996 videos in twoparts. Also kinda hard to disagree that Tincan Folklore was a precursor to a lot of the shit going on in videos today, even moreso than its exalted predecessor.

After the demise of Love, the Sabotage boys took a southern trip hitting a string of the few remaining plazas left in the U.S: Pulaski, Raleigh Courthouse, Legislative (safe to say this is probably the best spot in the country at this point?), Blackbox, etc.

Free beer to whoever disses it with a Tas Pappas tag. Photo via The Shady One

“One thing I realized once I started being in the world of Instagram was that people don’t let go of things. If something has emotionally affected somebody in some powerful way sometime in their life, that doesn’t fade. If anything, social media kind of fans the flame of that and almost reestablishes that emotional connection.” With so much discussion of social media and its pros/cons in any skate interview these days, it’s nice to hear that it actually does have a way of bringing about some greater good from one of the happiest people to ever ride a skateboard, Ray Barbee.

“With a skater like Jamal Williams, Ricky Oyola or even Pat Steiner, people aren’t pulling out the yardstick to measure how high they’re ollieing. It’s more the feelings people get by watching that person on a skateboard.” Also with a good bit of social media talk + skaters having an impact on people’s lives, Get Born Mag has a detailed interview with Josh Stewart. ~feelings~

Bobshirt has a 25-minute interview with Bill Strobeck detailing pretty much every last anecdote about the prime era of Alien Workshop + Habitat. Includes a special guest appearance from a former orange-beanied colleague halfway in ;)

Speaking of all new levels of skateboarding, Tiago was in town for Street League and these two clips of him skating Seaport and the L.E.S. Park got brought up in at least four conversations this weekend. #SOTY.

Put a formal Twitter inquiry regarding the inventor of the noseslide earlier this summer (the consensus was Gonz.) Mackenzie Eisenhour discusses it in this TWS piece regarding the origins of the noseblunt: “Even prior to the noseblunt, Mark is also credited with adapting the noseslide to ledges and handrails on the streets, after seeing photos of Neil Blender innovating nose stalls on ramps.”

Given as how they’ve been dominating all forms of culture since Switch Mike started blasting So Far Gone in any and all of his BMWs and Herschel became the new Jansport, it should come as no surprise that the most enjoyable skateboard podcast also comes from Canada. Season two of the Bunt is now running, and starts off with cult hero, Spencer Hamilton. Expedition-1 talk, non-alcoholic beers, etc.

Glad the news about the Berlin benches getting removed ended up being a false alarm. A replica of that should be mandatory for every U.S. city with over six skaters. My second favorite skate spot on this planet.

NY Skateboarding posted part one of apparently a three-part series of video interviews with Keith Hufnagel. This one talks about meeting Keenan Milton, the infamous Ryan Hickey house that housed all homeless skateboarders of the era, moving to San Francisco, skating Embarcadero, etc.

QS Sports Desk Play of the Week: Who cares about Melo’s Olympic postgame interview, Russell Westbrook’s “Now I Do What I Want” video is singlehandedly the most inspirational sports moment of 2016, and the only promotional material the NBA needs for the 2016-2017 season. #MVP.

Quote of the Week: “I’m so glad I didn’t go to double town China set.” — John Choi